Chapter 14: Her

Oct. 26th, 2018

I mention HER so much that I decided I wanted to talk about HER. Some background first. One afternoon when I was nine my mother came back from the grocery store. She puts the groceries away, packs a few things, then puts my sister and I in the car and the next thing I know I live in the deep South. My mother had pissed off the Mob. Two men had walked up to her in the store and told her she had 24 hours to get out of town or she was dead.

I ended up living up in the hood getting my ass beat on a regular basis for being a “cracker”. I had my fun working security in gang banger bars years later. Not saying I didn’t make some buddies because I did. I learned to play the dozens which is what youngsters call rap battles now and got pretty good. Now, before you go getting your panties in a twist. I don’t care who you are or the color of your skin if you treat me with basic human respect I’ll give the same back. I’ve placed my life on the line for Whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians, and I’d do it again if I could. But I sure enjoyed busting some heads that walked, talked, and acted like the ones that busted mine. Plus, they ALWAYS started it and the man who paid me was Black.

Eventually, Momma was able to get us a house in the country. I walked in the house one day and got pole axed. You have to understand before I walked through the door that day girls were just dudes with dresses on to me. I had no real interest. I talked shit with my buddies because if you didn’t you were considered queer which was a fate worse than death. I’d had little crushes here and there but not really.

I went through the front door and saw HER. In that instant, I understood with perfect clarity and went irrevocably insane. I imprinted on HER like a little duck. She was the living embodiment of the Feminine. In other words, puberty kicked in with absolute maximum force. Let me try to describe what I saw. She about 5’10 with a willowy frame. About 27 years old. She had long frizzy blond/brown hair (it was the 1980’s) with high cheek bones. she was wearing a white and brownish rabbit skin coat. A Carolina blue button up shirt with a thin gold necklace, skin tight blue jeans and dark brown calf high boots w/ heels. Nobody, but nobody in that area dressed like that. I had NEVER seen anything like that in my entire 13 years. I found out later she was a quarter Apache. My sister had brought her home. Come to find out she and her son had just left her drug dealer husband who had become abusive and had moved in with her parents who happened to live where I worked. SCORE!

I knew nothing about nothing except that she was mine. I fell over mine and every one else’s feet trying to please her. Lighting her cigarettes, getting her drinks, anything she wanted was fine by me. I saw her every day and she eventually got me to tone it down and showed me how she wanted to be treated. I’d babysit for her and do all the things that a teenager does for the older person they’re “In Love” with. My feelings never changed. No matter how many men she was with. She did things that would normally cause me to turn my back on a person, for HER there were no rules.

Why? She always treated me with respect. Always. She treated me as an equal within limits. No, she wouldn’t date me because of my age, but she would give anything I said or any action I proposed the same consideration she would have given if an adult had done it.

She knew the power she had over me and never abused it or me. I can’t tell you the number of clumsy passes I made at her over a three year period. She never got angry or verbally abused me. Example: We were once sitting on a picnic table together and I started rubbing her thigh, too hard I might add. She very lightly smacked my hand and in a gentle voice said “Stop it.” then kept talking as if nothing happened. She rejected my sexual advances. She didn’t reject me.

She was willing to allow me to express my feelings and accept them for what they were as long they were within boundaries. In my world prior to her there was no place for feelings because they would cloud your thinking and get you hurt. In my entire life up to meeting her there were only two people I trusted absolutely not to hurt me. My Grandmother and my sister. I include my mother in that list. I love my mother and she loved me, but she was an expert at making bad decisions that had painful consequences. The only person I trust absolutely today is my sister. If she told me to walk off the roof of a skyscraper I would ask her once if she was sure. If she said “yes.” I would do it. I figure she would have a good reason for needing me dead.

To have someone who would let me love them and not try to use it against me was priceless. As our friendship deepened a psychic bond formed between us. Laugh, if you will. I was in my last class in school one day when it came to me she’s in trouble. I raced to her home as soon as school let out. Her ex-husband was there, strung out on something. Everybody knew something was fixing to go down. Somebody called my mom because she came and got me. When we got home I walked straight in the front door and straight out the back and ran down the fire lane back to her house at my job. I wasn’t leaving her with him.

When I walked up it was tense, people were standing in doorways with guns. He was circling around a car with her alternately yelling and talking. I picked up a short piece of 2x4 and started goofing with it while staring at him and moving closer. I got within about twenty feet and stood there fiddling with my chunk of board while staring at him. Finally, he screamed at me “Are you her fucking bodyguard or something?” So I moved up so I was within one step of her. If she took a step to the right I took a step to the right.

I knew he had a gun. My judo book showed that the human skull has a seam that runs across the top and I knew that my only chance if he went for his gun was to attack that seam with my board. My friends would probably shoot him but I was just as likely to get hit. I didn’t care. Protecting HER was all that mattered. When he finally wound down enough he realized that there were a lot more of us than there were of him and we could and would kill him if he got too much stupider so he left.